Quick Links - Poets.org

follow poets.org

Search form

The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

“This poem presents the family as a form of religion, with many of the same hierarchies, rituals, and hypocrisies. Though the organizational structure of the familial church is theoretically based in love and the development of our best selves, the realities that actually evolve through that complex space often lead instead to damage, estrangement, and distress.”—Jennifer Militello

Lineage Is Its Own Religion

I was an apostle to the group of you, strangerswho had known me since I was born. I ateof your flesh. I drank of your blood. Sippedthe elixir of your moods. Put the remaindersin the tabernacle, wiped the goblet clean witha cloth. The crosses branded into the waferswere your voices branded onto my heart.I heard you live forever. I heard you rise.The bones of you yield to the memory of flesh,and we count our blessings and also bless.We are bright in anticipation of death,we are living like fissures and set against waste,and the taste is bitter, left in our mouths.I am dying, I am dead, lord of the losses, lordof the faith. I take each breath and my chestexpands. Now I stand knee deep in the muckunable to move, and if I dip my hands in,they will fill with bracken and all the thicknessof each formless face, kicking up stones,until you are gone, mythic lisp the lipsshape. One day, you vanish like a flash.Confessions in a dark room. Firmaments to readand spin like dice. I genuflect twice at the edgeof your pews. I kiss the book for you. This is whatthe word of family can do. Sit at the round table.Break bread. In the beginning, the lovelessmade the world and saw that it was good.

Jennifer Militello

Jennifer Militello is the author of A Camouflage of Specimens (Tupelo Press, 2016), Body Thesaurus (Tupelo Press, 2013), and Flinch of Song (Tupelo Press, 2009), winner of the Tupelo Press First Book Award.

Take the man you think you love and hisfabulous lips. Take him from one placeto the next. Let him drive your car. Let himdrive it through the mood-crazed woodsuntil it overheats. Let the nights feedfrom your eyes as you look at him. Donot turn on the heat. Do not spillthe

related poems

The moths in the orchard squealwith each pass of the mistral wind.Yet the reapers and their scythes,out beyond the pear trees, slay wheatin sure columns. Christmust have been made of shocksof wheat. When they lashed him,four bundles of fine yellow burst

You think I like to stand all day, all night,
all any kind of light, to be subject only
to wind? You are right. If seasons undo
me, you are my season. And you are the light
making off with its reflection as my stainless
steel fins spin.
On lawns, on lawns we stand,
we windmills make a

The body is a nation I have never known.The pure joy of air: the moment between leapingfrom a cliff into the wall of blue below. Like that.Or to feel the rub of tired lungs against skin-covered bone, like a hand against the rough of bark.Like that. "The body is a